Archive for February 2008
Why wars start and continue
Photomosaic of Iraq war dead as President Bush, from Michaelmoore.com.People generally seem to overestimate the rationality of war. It is, for example, a common assumption that the Afghanistan war continues as a consequence of regular, rational assessments of whether it is achieving anything. In the case of Iraq, those arguing in favour of that war frequently assume that the occupation continues for the reasons stated by politicians.
What, it seems to me, is frequently underestimated, are the institutional and social pressures, particularly within US and British society, that enable war:-
- Their populations, still steeped in the heroic mythology of victory in WWII and free of any experience of invasion, have far less of the visceral horror of warfare that pervades other societies.
